this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2025
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The Democratic National Convention™ of Libjerk
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Dems keep working with trump to approve his picks, but what they won't accept is that if you sit down at a table with nazis, the only thing that's changed is the number of nazis at the table. @_cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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In The Dawn Of Everything Graeber puts forth three tenets for actual freedom that are consistent with anarchist ideals:
freedom to move. This means the freedom to go anywhere, although people having personal property and space is respected. So no borders but you can’t just post up in someone’s bedroom and say “I live here now.”
freedom to associate (and not associate) with others. You cannot be forbidden from being part of a group nor can you be required to be part of one.
freedom to refuse. Your actions are done only by your choice. You cannot be compelled to take action or remain inactive.
As with most simple sets of rules these quickly lead to complex scenarios but I think they make a good basis for an equitable society.
The problem with having rights but no authority is that there's no recourse for someone whose rights are infringed, because effectively stopping that requires some kind of authority with the power to do so.
For me this falls under "would be nice if everyone stuck to this, but it completely fails when someone decides they don't want to stick to it".
This is why communities need to build up and connect. Consent-based power structures (e.g. direct democracy, decentralized, horizontal power structures) can provide aid and assistance to those subjected to rights violations.
While there may not be a formal police force, do you think everybody in such a world would stand idle in the face of a tyrant or mass murderer? It's only happening now because people are so disconnected and given the fact there is no democracy - only an illusion of it.
Under socialism, people won't be as motivated to steal and commit other crimes to meet their needs, besides perhaps sexual "needs", which I'd argue such sexual crimes would become rarer as healthier communities form and rebuild. And individuals who committed crimes in the past would likely be allowed to be rehabilitated and properly enabled to re-enter society, instead of being left with no choice to commit crime to survive because nobody wants to hire them.
If you or anybody else knows more about anarchy than I do, please correct me if I'm wrong, but anarchy is not chaos without the state and centralized governance.
Related reading: https://www.anarchy.no/anrights.html
Consent-based power structures generally rarely last for long. Power has a tendency to accumulate, as there will always be people who hoard it. And historically, that power is often given willingly, obtained through deception or through sheer strength. Smaller communities have no real ability to resist such larger hierarchies that will form when someone or some group decides to no longer play by anarchist rules.
I personally think anarchism correctly identifies the accumulation of power as an inherent threat to society. But I don't think power in general is the problem, but rather the accumulation in a single entity is. A measure of power is necessary to protect a community.
It's why the whole "separation of powers" idea has worked fairly well in the past, though perhaps the powers should be separated even further. Separated domains, each with clearly defined limits on their powers.
What is the recourse when those freedoms are infringed?
I think these are good ideas. What I don't understand is how they survive in the world. Let's say you're an anarchist community of 200 people living in Palestine...?
Anarchy has a government of people with no specific rules or enforcement. It's dumb as shit, what you want is communism or socialism where rules don't apply to you specifically unless you consent, they want to be king in a land of peasants they just don't want to feel bad about it.